Thursday, January 15, 2009
To be literate in today's society means to have a command of a range of increasingly diverse and complex texts and technologies: that is, to be multiliterate (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000)
- The New London Group's (NLG) multiliteracies article suggests that in this increasingly technological world, teachers and students must be able to adapt to the new literacies that are coming up faster than we can imagine. With this, teacher should actually replace their traditional view of literacy with a broader view of it in order to prepare our students to design their social futures. Armed with multiliteracy pedagogy, teachers will be able to better engage and stimulate students' interests.
Multiliteracy pedagogy will enable our students to access the increasingly diversified and ever changing working society by fostering understanding and control of the representational forms.
With the new literacies that spring up every now and then, I won't be surprised if the cartoon below actually depicts our future generation...
- As the world becomes globalised, there is also an increased diversity in culture, language, text and other representational forms. Multiplicity of communications and media in this case, is accommodated under the pedagogy of multiliteracies as it allows the integration of various modes of meaning-making to deal with the differences brought about by diversity.
- To address the ('What') of the pedagogy of multiliteracy, the concept of 'Design' came up. The 'Design' mentioned by NLG is used to describe the forms of meaning or the content. To bring into our context, we teachers can be considered designers of students' learning processes and the environment in which learning takes place.
How we as teachers can actively design learning will depend on three elements,
a) Available Designs
b) Designing
c) The Redesigned
Through the 3 elements, teachers can actively construct new meanings in a non-linear process. The Available Designs provides the initial resources for Designing to take place for new meaning making resources to be created through The Redesigned. The ('What') of the pedagogy of multiliteracy will be translated into ('How') in the next section as I exemplify with my practicum experience. - With the advent of technology in the current era, multiliteracy is no longer an unfamiliar term in schools. We can see the influx of modern literacies like blogging, video blogging, Wikis, 3D animations and gamings etc. being infused into teaching.
I was lucky to be exposed to the use of podcasts during my second practicum as my CT happens to be in charge of the IT club. Initially, I did not think that it was interesting nor will students be able to learn much from it. But I was wrong! All the students that I observed were very focused and engaged during the process of creating their podcasts. This got me interested and I began to follow my CT whenever there were IT club sessions.
The pedagogy of multiliteracy was implemented to help develop the students literary, speaking and IT skills in a way which interests them. Its interactivity also allows students to share their work with others and get their comments for their creations.
After reading the NLG's article, I was able to relate the term, 'Multiliteracy' and the concepts I have learnt from the article, to my experience with students creating podcasts. The 4 critical aspects ('How') of the pedagogy of multiliteracy that NLG mentioned can be used to show how learning takes place in podcasting:
Situated Practice
Students can choose to bring:
- CDs containing songs that they like to discuss the genre of songs that they want for their podcasts or
- their favourite storybooks or even DVDs of movies they like to discuss the story plot for their podcasts
From the samples of songs or stories that they have brought, students will find out what are important to a good song or story. (Eg. the lyrics or the plot of the story)
Overt instructions
The teacher will have a discussion with the students to get them to notice how the genre of songs/lyrics/story plot/characters that they choose can have an effect on the overall meaning. The teacher will also play some audio clips or audio books to illustrate the effects.
This is where students develop the metalanguage for design.
Critical framing
Students will have a sharing session to see what kind of songs or story podcasts are popular among their friends and learn from the constructive critiques given during the session to think of ways to improve on their own.
Transformed practice
Students now write their own lyrics/stories and do a podcast based on them. These are then shared online with others in the school.
Here the students are designers of social futures.
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Podcasting has been quite popular with schools and there has been a yearly National Schools Podcast Competition to encourage the use of such new literacies.
What was mentioned above illustrates one way that multiliteracies pedagogy can seep into our school context, I've added a link on the sidebar to the schools that participated in the LEAD ICT@Schools Scheme and from their school's websites, you will be able to find many exciting and engaging ways that multiliteracy can work for you.
Podcasting has been quite popular with schools and there has been a yearly National Schools Podcast Competition to encourage the use of such new literacies.
What was mentioned above illustrates one way that multiliteracies pedagogy can seep into our school context, I've added a link on the sidebar to the schools that participated in the LEAD ICT@Schools Scheme and from their school's websites, you will be able to find many exciting and engaging ways that multiliteracy can work for you.
Labels: NLG Article Response
7:30 AM
Jess Chen...
